Security and accountability

I'm sorry didn't get here yesterday. I just faded away when I got home last night. Didn't blog a thing all day except for this item on homeland security. The kings of prison profiteering, Wackenhut, are guarding our DHS headquarters. According to some former employees, it's not going very well. Anybody could waltz in off the street and blow the bloody place up and they wouldn't know what to do about it much less prevent it from happening in the first place.

Anyway, I'm working a long day today so it's a short summary kind of morning, Starting with this depressing failure of oversight by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Republicans on the committee say they have reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days. In other words, they have caved into White House pressure and will underwrite Bush's illegal surveillance retroactively. This will head off a vote on a full investigation of the four years worth of illegal surveillance already perpetrated under the NSA program. Our best hope for accountability, Hagel and Snowe, after all their fine rhetoric, let us down.

"We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight," Ms. Snowe said.

What a crock of crapola. As Glenn Greewald put it, "Could our government be any more broken? ...Whether the Administration is held accountable for its actions will ultimately be determined not by whether the GOP-controlled Intelligence Committee votes to hold hearings, but will be almost exclusively a function of whether the public demands accountability and consequences."